Our Event is postponed until February 6th.
We are writing to let you all know that our announcement event scheduled for Wednesday, Dec 19th is being postponed.
We will announce the new date shortly. If you’d like to know why we’re being a little secretive, read on, we have quite a story to tell
On September 10th, we took possession of the 5th floor of 25 W 39th Street and immediately began planning our first squash facility.
Step 1: Begin demolition.
We had five vendors whose bids ranged from the low $10s of thousands to the mid six figures. We selected one and started taking out the showroom and office space that was there before us.
Once we realized that there would be a gap between demolition and construction, (We can’t go out to get construction bids until the exact dimensions of the space are known and we won’t know that until after demolition is complete), we decided to invite people to visit the space and celebrate our beginning with an event. The demolition was planned to be complete by Thanksgiving, and so we planned our event for the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, November 27th.
God bless engineers.
Our building (at least that’s how we’re beginning to think of it) was originally constructed in 1906 for the Engineers’ Society and the floor we are on used to be their assembly rooms which is why they have such high ceilings (squash courts need a minimum of 18ft – the engineers built their space with 19ft ceilings – God Bless Engineers!).
Discovered during demolition.
The most common insulation material at the time was…. asbestos. And in the middle of demolition, what did we find? Asbestos.
The building Management (Thor Equities) were magnificent, they stepped up, paid for the asbestos to be removed – this is a pretty standard procedure these days – and we re-scheduled our event for Wednesday, Dec 19th.
But guess what – yesterday, as we did more demolition, we found another ninety feet of asbestos insulation (see pics) that has to be removed. Once again, Thor Equities has stepped up. As I write this, Thor Equities are removing all of the asbestos using a specialized crew and have a third party coming in to measure the air quality to make sure all is OK.
They should be finished before Dec 25th, but not in time for our rescheduled event on the 19th. And so once again we have to move the date.
We’ve made the assumption that although you love us, you probably don’t want to spend Christmas Eve at the newly demolished squash center – and so we’re moving our tour and celebration to the New Year.
In an abundance of caution, we’d like to hold off announcing a date until we are absolutely sure that the space is cleared for habitation!
Make good.
If you cannot make it and you’ve bought a ticket we will of course give you a refund. Though we would love you to consider making your ticket a donation to our cause.
We are a non-profit who has taken on the daunting task of building Manhattan’s first new, publicly accessible, squash center this century.
It’s been wonderful to see everyone support us, including building management who have gone above and beyond. Thank you all. Have a wonderful holiday season and we’ll see you all in the New Year.